This invention relates to concrete products and, more particularly, to a mortarless retaining-wall system and components thereof.
Retaining walls that can be built without the use of mortar require a smaller expenditure of labor and time to construct than those utilizing mortar to hold the components in place. Generally, the price paid for mortarless construction is a reduction in the allowable height of the retaining wall. Wahrendorf et al Pat. No. 4,193,718 discloses a retaining wall constructed from stacked, alternately staggered rows of spaced, nesting, chevron-shaped concrete blocks. The top face of each block has a convex angular surface with a vertex extending between the side faces of the block, and its bottom face has a concave angular surface with a vertex extending between the side faces of the block. The convexity of the top face matches the concavity of the bottom face, so that the blocks can be stacked on top of each other in interlocking fashion. Despite the interlocking action between blocks, when a high retaining wall is built, the horizontal force exerted on the top of the wall by the retained soil tends to cause the upper blocks to slide relative to the blocks beneath them, thereby limiting the allowable height of the wall.